Big Youth Group launches to address underemployment for students.

Young entrepreneur and social influencer Jack Parsons who was himself twice a ‘Neet’ and ex-Havas Media Group boss, Paul Frampton have teamed up to launch the Big Youth Group – a group of companies that are all focused on improving the odds for young people. The Group will focus on helping educate businesses (both big and small) and change their attitudes to give young people improved pathways for the new world of employment. The Group has been meeting big businesses for the past few weeks and already confirmed partnerships with Accenture, Sage & Google. 

As well as educating business, Big Youth Group will specifically focus on improving the odds for young people by giving young people the right platform to get ahead in the working world, whether they be straight out of college or university and unable to get the job they expected, wanting to launch their own business or find a more purposeful career. Recent statistics suggest that as many as 20% of graduates are forced to take non-professional jobs – “under-employment” as Parsons calls it, is a virus that The Big Youth Group seeks to tackle.

Paul Frampton will take on the role of Chairman and Jack Parsons will run the day to day as CEO overseeing each company and ensuring that the group keeps its laser focus on helping young people. Parsons had previous experience of leading youth platform yourfeed but stepped down as CEO after it ran into issues with certain investors. Yourfeed, for which Frampton also sat on the board, achieved great traction in just 18 months under Parsons leadership in its mission to help young people showcase their skills beyond a CV, raising over £1m investment and achieving a valuation of £8m. Yourfeed successfully created a unique, deeply engaged community of young people who brought in to the solution, vision and purpose that founder Parsons laid out to achieve.

Paul Frampton said: “I’m excited to be supporting Jack in his mission to continue to give young people an unfair advantage. Young people are the future of our society, economy and of business, yet too often they are faced with brick walls or a lack of support. We aim to help them get more on-demand access to mentors, opportunities and work experience within a commercial environment.”

Jack Parsons, CEO said:  “Every young person is at a different stage of their working journey. We wanted to launch a group with a collective of meaningful brands focusing on each stage of a young person’s life. Our mission is to be able to help both a 16 year old looking for their first time job or a 28 year old looking for a change of career to something more purposeful”

The group contains a for-profit social enterprise called the Big Youth Project that aims to create a community of 2 million and connect 400,000 of those young people to real work-life experiences – internships, skills, apprenticeships, jobs, work experience, companies and mentors. The Big Youth Project will initially focus on helping their community into work-life experiences and on the creation of a digital marketplace with phase one of the release that provides micro-mentoring so young people can access a mentor on-demand in the same way they can order a meal or find a date. The Group already has a large community of young people engaged via Whatsapp.

President TechUK & Chair Digital Leaders, Jacqueline de Rojas CBE, a non-exec Rightmove, AO.com and Costain Group, will lend her support as a business advisor to the Big Youth Group and will continue to mentor and coach Jack Parsons personally. Speaking about future technology talent, she said: “We must adapt to the next generation in terms of how they work and learn, if we are going to attract and retain young talent”

The Big Youth Group is keen to meet and speak with professionals from the education sector – colleges, training providers & universities to discuss creating meaningful partnerships that will bridge the gap between education, business and young people.